video games, virtual worlds, education, philanthropy, stuff

My Other Accounts

This is the personal blog of Jesse Powell, co-founder and CEO at Kraken Bitcoin Exchange, formerly of Lewt, Inc.

I will be blogging on things that interest me, and where I think my perspective may be valuable to other people. I will not be blogging often.

Topics you can expect to see discussed include: video games, virtual worlds, education, philanthropy, philosophy, and probably to a lesser extent, politics, psychology, business and law.

It should be noted that I am still acting CEO at Kraken and advisor to Lewt. While I am not blogging here on the behalf of any company, I may to some degree censor my statements to protect their interests and my contractual obligations, especially when it comes proprietary and trade secret information.

If you're looking for news about Kraken, I suggest you follow @KrakenFX on Twitter. If you're looking for some Diablo 2 freebies, I suggest you follow @Lewt on Twitter.

September 2011

09/27/2011

Sadly, most, if not all of this is true. Here's what I know: Blizzard either wants to destroy Diablo 2, they're totally incompetent, or somebody on the inside has his own agenda and the power + lack of effective supervision to carry it out. See my last post from '09 about the 1.13 patch and how they (mis)handled that.

Lewt has reported numerous Diablo 2 exploits to Blizzard (anonymously) and very few have ever been patched. Blizzard's policy seems to be: Don't patch it until it becomes a serious PR problem. I don't know what possible excuse you could have for letting a known dupe method go unchecked for 2 years before making an attempt at patching it. Then again, Diablo 2 is a business, and it's a business that isn't very profitable for them so they'd rather you played something else, like WoW. Sure, Lewt is a business too so why would we report exploits? 1. Not all exploits are valuable to us and many harm the game, which is bad for our business, 2. Our competitors are using exploits that are not necessary to us, to compete with us.

True-xC is correct in that there is no safe method of reporting a valuable exploit to Blizzard. They expect you to just submit it to their all-purpose hacks@blizzard.com. Unless you feel like handing a million dollars over to some 19 year old intern, I suggest you not submit exploits this way. You don't know who's receiving your messages and you don't know what they're doing with them. Nobody would be the wiser if the guy manning the mailbox that morning scribbled down your method, sent your email to the trash and 2 days later was in business as a duper. Also, in my experience Blizzard is not very appreciative of exploits submitted. Their respones are generally "thanks for that million dollar dupe method, now bugger off. We might patch it someday, and no, we can't discuss this any further. Goodbye." Maybe this is just me but if you come to me and tell me you've compromised Lewt's servers, I'm offering you a job 2 seconds later, not telling you to bugger off. Anyway, I don't blame guys who find exploits and don't report them--with Blizzard it's a thankless job.

True-xC is correct in that an old dupe method was patched with 1.13, and that a new, much faster dupe method was introduced with 1.13. Unfortunately, I can't go in to details but the way that this new dupe has been introduced makes absolutely no sense. It really does seem like someone intentionally put it there, and this wouldn't be the first time that has happened in Diablo 2's history. Why confirm this? Lewt benefits if this method is patched. I can't say the same for other shops, however.

What I can't confirm is whether someone on the inside at Blizzard is intentionally adding new exploits and failing to patch old ones. You'd think that if they were profiting from Diablo 2, they'd want to make the game more enjoyable, take stronger measures against spambots and farmbots, actually make a content patch once in a while. I'm leaning towards doesn't give a shit/incompetent but I wouldn't be surprised if this latest dupe was added intentionally either. There's a lot of money to be made for someone with a dupe, especially early on in a ladder reset. It's your $80k/yr salary to patch it, or $80k/mo to not patch it. When you dupe on a proxy, communicate under an alias, and have the payments go to cousin Jimmy in Hong Kong you're anonymous so why not?

It might be tempting to release the method to the public but this is something that Lewt is unlikely to ever do simply because it would destroy the economy, which would be very bad for us. Blizzard has shown in the past that they are not always able/willing to make a patch quickly. Exploits that have ruined the game have gone on for months. Remember the hexing charms and all those bugged items? They can't even update Warden for chrissakes. My guess is that if the method were made public, we'd find out how incompetent Blizzard really is. The game would be shit within a matter of days and they might just wait until D3 is out to patch it, if ever. Diablo 2 is such an old game and the people capable of making a competent patch probably don't work for the company anymore.

Hopefully Blizzard will look in to the claim against Rethek. I have no solid evidence against him or anyone else on the Legacy Team. Diablo 2 certainly has been neglected but my guess is that's a decision made much higher up. We should all be praying that they actually patch this dupe before they reset the ladder. Maybe that's what this delay is about? I'm not holding my breath.